How to use python to download a file

Note that in Python 3, urllib2 was merged in to urllib as urllib. Therefore, this script works only in Python 2.

The open method accepts two parameters, the path to the local file and the mode in which data will be written. Here "wb" states that the open method should have permission to write binary data to the given file. Execute the above script and go to your "Downloads" directory. You should see the downloaded pdf document as "cat2. You can also download files using requests module. The get method of the requests module is used to download the file contents in binary format.

You can then use the open method to open a file on your system, just like we did with the previous method, urllib2. In the above script, the open method is used once again to write binary data to local file.

If you execute the above script and go to your "Downloads" directory, you should see your newly downloaded JPG file named "cat3. With the requests module, you can also easily retrieve relevant meta-data about your request, including the status code, headers and much more. In the above script, you can see how we access some of this meta-data. If you need to add customer headers, for example, all you need to do is create a dict with your headers and pass it to your get request:.

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Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. How to use a download link to download a file in Python Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 3 months ago. Active 6 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 4k times. Josh Josh 2 2 silver badges 11 11 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Murali Murali 66 6 6 bronze badges. I would, but with urlretrieve, I need the permissions for that page, which Python doesn't send. If you have authentication to download a file, then you might want to give a try to mechanize module.

You can replicate the steps you do on the website, like open url, login and navigate, etc. URLopener testfile. Community Bot 1 1 1 silver badge.